


We Could Call This a Life

by helloearthlings



Category: King Falls AM (Podcast)
Genre: Closeted Character, Established Relationship, M/M, Pre-Canon, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-10
Updated: 2018-11-10
Packaged: 2019-08-21 10:30:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16574732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/helloearthlings/pseuds/helloearthlings
Summary: “I’m fine,” Sammy croaks, his voice half its usual volume and with a creaking wobbliness to it that makes it impossible for Jack not to reach out and cup Sammy’s cheek. Sammy leans into the touch with closed eyes.“No you’re not, you sound terrible,” Jack says, and Sammy makes a noise that sounds half like an argument and half like an agreement. Jack moves his hand up slightly to press against Sammy’s forehead. “And you feel hot.”“Thanks, baby,” Sammy mutters under his breath, sarcastic but there’s a smile twitching on his lips.





	We Could Call This a Life

**Author's Note:**

> Very much unedited, but completed and that's the important thing! And also the first thing I've written with Jack since hearing his perfect voice. I love him so much. Hope everyone enjoys!

Jack wakes up to the sound of Sammy coughing. Jack doesn’t recognize the sound for a few hazy seconds, but that doesn’t last long. The hacking is rough, deep, and sounds painful. Jack blinks himself awake, turning to brush his hand against Sammy’s shoulder.

“Sammy, you alright?” Jack asks, still not quite awake yet. The room is blurry without his contact lenses in, and he reaches across Sammy to grab his glasses that are sitting on the bedside table. Sammy’s facing away from Jack, holding to a pillow to his chest, his coughs becoming a little less violent.

Jack sits up once he has his glasses on, and Sammy follows suit a few seconds later. Jack immediately notices the redness around his eyes as Sammy lets out another miserable hack that shakes his entire body.

“I’m fine,” Sammy croaks, his voice half its usual volume and with a creaking wobbliness to it that makes it impossible for Jack not to reach out and cup Sammy’s cheek. Sammy leans into the touch with closed eyes.

“No you’re not, you sound terrible,” Jack says, and Sammy makes a noise that sounds half like an argument and half like an agreement. Jack moves his hand up slightly to press against Sammy’s forehead. “And you feel hot.”

“Thanks, baby,” Sammy mutters under his breath, sarcastic but there’s a smile twitching on his lips.

Jack cranes his neck to look at the clock. It’s a little past five; the alarm is going to go off any minute, and they’re due into work for their show to start at six, but Sammy’s leaning into Jack’s hand like it’s a pillow.

“Go back to sleep,” Jack tells him, and moves to get out of bed but Sammy’s hand grasps around for Jack’s and pulls him back.

“Don’t _go_ ,” Sammy says, and Jack laughs at the petulance in his voice.

“I’m gonna go in for the show,” Jack tells him, pulling Sammy’s hand off of his own. “You go back to sleep.”

Sammy squints up at him, and then over at the clock, which makes him groan. “I can still make it in for the show.”

“Sammy, you sound like you’ve been gargling acid,” Jack tells him because he’s not one to beat around the bush. Sammy makes a face at him. “You’ll only sound worse if you have to be on the air for hours. Lily and I can handle it without you today.”

“I _can_ ,” Sammy starts, and then undercuts himself with another wracking coughing fit that Jack rubs his back comfortingly through.

“Sleep,” Jack kisses the back of Sammy’s neck. “I’ll be back when the show’s over and we can go to the doctor’s.”

“I hate the doctor,” Sammy wrinkles his nose as soon as he stops hacking.

“We can see how you’re feeling when I get back,” Jack says, and again tries to get up. Sammy doesn’t reach out this time, but he looks up at Jack with doe eyes, which is almost worse.

 “We can both play hooky…” Sammy starts and Jack’s heart skips an uncomfortable beat.

“Lily would kill us,” Jack says so he can avoid saying his real worry, which is always _the studio would notice._ The two of them seem to live in a perpetual state of worry about what the studio notices, specifically about just how attached Sammy and Jack are to one another.

Sammy makes a displeased sound, but he lies back down and curls himself around Jack’s abandoned pillow. If Jack hadn’t been sure of how sick he was before, he was now – Sammy rarely did anything without argument.  

Jack tries to be as quiet as he can as he dresses. Half of his belongings are here in Sammy’s apartment, and it’s getting harder and harder to tell whose clothes are whose, which creates a certain level of paranoia in both of them about what the studio would notice.

Jack rummages through Sammy’s medicine cabinet, glad to find a bag of cough drops and a half-full bottle of liquid DayQuil. He sets both on the bedside cabinet for Sammy when he wakes up.

Even though it looks like Sammy’s fallen back asleep if the evening out of his breathing is anything to go by, Jack leans across the bed to kiss Sammy’s forehead goodbye.

Sammy twitches, blinking his eyes open at Jack, a slight smile on his face. “Bye.”

“Bye,” Jack says softly, wishing, as he does often, that he never had to leave this room.

* * *

 

“Welcome back to 1090 AM with Jack and Lily Wright. Apparently our esteemed cohost Sammy Stevens is sad and sniffling today, so you’re stuck with us, but I don’t believe that sick excuse for a second. I’m sure Sammy’s having a lovely morning sleeping in leaving the two of us to scramble without him.”

“Oh, go easy on him,” Jack interrupts Lily, whose laughing with bright eyes despite her complaining tone. “He sounds like a garbage disposal. You’d be _much_ more annoyed if he were here, I promise.”

“Well, I’m always annoyed when he’s here,” Lily says with a shit-eating grin. “But that does beg the question of how _you_ know what he sounds like right now, Jack.”

Jack’s skin crawls; Lily’s wiggling eyebrows and smug grin are hard enough to avoid off the air. “He called me when he knew he couldn’t come in. He sounded more like Darth Vader than anything, so I think we should both be thrilled that he can’t spread his germs to us.”

“Oh, I’m sure he’ll purposefully cough on me when I see him next, just because that’s the kind of guy he is,” Lily, thankfully, moves onto other, less dangerous topics that don’t increase Jack’s blood pressure.

Their general manager Tony has different ideas for Jack’s blood pressure, and he pokes his head into the studio on their next commercial break, a frown furrowing his brow.

“Stevens out sick?” Tony says, and though it’s phrased like a question, it’s clearly a pronounced judgment. Jack shifts uncomfortably in his seat and doesn’t make eye contact.

“Yeah,” Jack says, pretending to busy himself with his laptop, checking the sound levels even though he knows they’re perfectly fine.

Tony makes a grunting noise. “Figures.”

“It’s a good thing he’s not here, whatever it is sounded contagious,” Jack says, keeping his voice deliberately even and still not looking in Tony’s direction. Tony’s never liked Sammy, and Jack doesn’t know why that it is but it puts him on edge.

“Yeah, whatever,” Tony mutters under his breath. “He gonna be back tomorrow?”

“Dunno,” Jack says. “I’ll tell him to call you later.”

“You do that,” Tony says, and the door slams behind him.

“The fuck’s his problem?” Lily asks with raised eyebrows and Jack sighs.

“No fucking clue,” Jack says as the commercial fades, his mind unable to stop him from going to extremes of what exactly Tony might have against Sammy. He adjusts his microphone, not used to being the one introducing new segments but still familiar enough with being behind a microphone that it doesn’t bother him. “You’re back with Jack and Lily….”

* * *

 

“You’re leaving already?” Lily asks, giving Jack a questioning look when Jack packs up all of his stuff in the studio instead of heading to their office. “I thought we were gonna go over last month’s analysis.”

“Might as well wait so we can all do it together, or we’ll just do it twice,” Jack says like pragmatism and logic are his only considerations here. “Besides, I want to go make sure Sammy hasn’t choked on his own spit or something.”

Lily rolls her eyes, her expression long-suffering but fond. “Of course you do. Alright, let’s go.”

“Let’s –” Jack starts blankly and Lily groans.

“Keep up, kid,” Lily says, walking past Jack with a light hit to the back of his head. “Let’s go to Stevens’s germy apartment and make sure he’s not dying or anything.  I need real confirmation that he’s not playing hooky, anyway.”

“My word’s not enough?” Jack snarks at her as they head into the parking lot and the all too hot Florida mid-morning sunlight.

“Not so much,” Lily snipes right back. “Your car or mine?”

“Just follow me,” Jack mutters uncomfortably, heading away from Lily to unlock his car.

“I can bring you back here after –” Lily tries to point out but Jack decides not to listen.

Sammy’s apartment is a ten minute drive away. Jack thinks about calling ahead to warn Sammy that Lily’s coming and he’s going to have act like a person, but decides that on the off-chance that Sammy’s still asleep, Jack might as well let him keep being unconscious. Maybe he could sleep through Lily’s whole visit and Jack could usher her out of the apartment so he could collapse into bed next to his boyfriend without sisterly interference.

Lily’s eyebrow is almost perpetually raised in Jack’s general direction with judgment, but it raises into her hairline when Jack pulls Sammy’s keys out of his back pocket to unlock the front door.

“You have his keys,” Lily states, and Jack doesn’t know what she’s insinuating ,but it’s certainly something.

Jack can’t lie and say that the keys are his own set. They’re clearly Sammy’s, his car key is attached as well, and his keychain that Jack got him years ago that says _Late as Usual_ in bubbly print.

“I stopped by this morning on my way to work,” Jack lies. “Sammy didn’t have his own DayQuil. He said to take his keys so I could let myself in later.”

“Well, isn’t that sweet,” Lily says, voice dry as can be. Jack falls back on his usual method of pretending he can’t hear her, and unlocks the door to let them inside. “Sammy’s oh so lucky to have a friend like you that looks out for him, Jack.”

“That sounds like sarcasm, but I’m going to pretend it’s genuine,” Jack informs her, “because Sammy _is_ lucky that he has a friend that cares about him like I do. And you’re lucky you have a brother that hasn’t pushed you off the nearest cliff yet…”

Lily snorts, and the two of them shove each other like five year olds on their way up the stairs, which is generally what their arguments devolve into. It’s easier to shove Lily than to have a serious conversation with her, that’s for sure, and that’s the method Jack plans on sticking to for as long as humanly possible.

“Sammy?” Jack calls immediately upon opening the door to Sammy’s second floor apartment. “You awake?”

The living room and kitchen look untouched from the previous night, so Jack figures on first glance that Sammy hasn’t left the bedroom yet. Which is absolutely fine, but Jack’s not going to go in there with Lily here. Lily would take one look at the room and realize that Jack had been sleeping there more often than in his own apartment.

 “You can just come in – oh,” Sammy croaks as he appears in the threshold between his room and the living room, blinking at Lily a couple of times as if to clarify her image. “I – hi, Lily.”

“Hey, Stevens,” Lily says, the look on her face unreadable but still somehow insufferable. “Jack was right, you sound like you’ve choked on a bag of nails. Or choked on something else.”

She laughs, but Sammy and Jack don’t. Sammy shrinks in on himself at the comment, and Jack crosses the room, not toward Sammy but toward the kitchen. All he wants to do is go kiss his boyfriend hello and check his temperature, but he’ll settle for more subtle ways of taking care of him.

“Have you eaten?” Jack asks, shrugging off his jacket and setting it on the tiny square table in the kitchen’s corner. “Should I make breakfast?”

Sammy nods at him, eyes wide and more than a little miserable, and Jack can tell that Sammy wishes they were alone, too. Jack grimaces sympathetically.

“Eggs are good sick food,” Lily says, crossing the room to set her own jacket next to Jack’s. “Maybe an omelet?”

“Okay,” Sammy croaks. “How was the show?”

“Boring without you,” Lily says, moving around Jack with practiced ease to pull ingredients out of the fridge. Jack feels an unnecessary surge of protective anger, because he wants to be the one to take care of Sammy, but he knows it’s unjustified and Lily is just looking out for her friend, too. “Tony’s pissed at you for skipping.”

Sammy sighs. “When’s Tony not pissed at me?”

“Good question,” Lily says, rolling her eyes. “Anyway, we can cover for you tomorrow if you need to stay home again. And with your voice sounding like that, I’d highly recommend that. You’re not radio ready in the slightest.”

“You’re a real flatterer,” Sammy says, rolling his eyes right back at her. “I – I’m gonna go take a shower, if that’s okay.”

“Yeah, yeah, go ahead,” Jack says, though he feels a bit apprehensive about being left alone with Lily and no buffer again and no radio show to distract her with. “Maybe breathing in the steam will help.”

Sammy nods before saying a soft “Thanks, guys,” and disappearing back into his room.

Jack wishes he could follow him, and his mild apprehension quickly becomes full-blown when Lily starts laughing quietly to herself as she pulls a pan out of the cupboard.

“What is it?” Jack asks her, but she just shakes her head. “Don’t make that face at me.”

“What face?” Lily says, her voice the epitome of innocence while her look is all too knowing, and Jack holds a groan in.

“That face,” Jack says as he gets a stick of butter out of the fridge. “That… _smug f_ ace. Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about.”

  
“No idea,” Lily says, her voice more than a little sing-song. “It’s just…very _domestic_.”

“What, us making Sammy breakfast?” Jack asks, deciding playing dumb is his best recourse here, too. “He’s not going to feed himself when he’s this sick.”

“Not _us_ ,” Lily says. “ _You._ Stopping by. Having his keys.”

“Alright, whatever,” Jack replies while trying not to sound like he’s tense as hell. Which he absolutely is. He rolls his shoulders back as he busies himself with melting butter.

“Just don’t get too caught up in it,” Lily says, and that makes Jack stop short and look her in the eye. Her gaze doesn’t give anything away, it’s only her perpetual _silly little brother_ look that hasn’t left her face in years.

“In what?” Jack asks, voice as flat as he can make it.

“You two are the least subtle people in the world,” Lily says, and Jack’s stomach immediately ties itself in knots. What the fuck does she know about…? “But it would be a bad idea – trust me.”

“A…bad idea,” Jack says, now more confused than anything. “I – Lily, what are you even talking about?”

“Don’t act like an idiot,” Lily tells him. “Sammy can act like an idiot because he is one, but I know you know what I’m talking about, Jack.”

“I really don’t,” Jack tells her, honest as can be. “What is it?”

Lily’s look softens to one that’s almost sympathetic. “Look, we’re all making sacrifices to be on the air every morning. I get that. More than most would. But you two sleeping together would be a bad idea.”

“I – uh – _what_?” Jack asks, eyes darting in the direction of Sammy’s room, listening for the sound of the shower that means Sammy can’t hear what Lily’s saying right now.

“I mean, it’s so fucking obvious that you’re desperate for each other,” Lily rolls her eyes as Jack gapes at her, omelet forgotten. “I’m surprised I’m the only one who noticed. You stare at him whenever you’re not paying attention, he absolutely _melts_ around you. It’s not subtle in the slightest. And as much as I don’t get the appeal for either of you, I guess I understand.”

“Lily, you’ve got this all wrong,” Jack says, feeling like he needs to sit down before he falls down.

“Don’t even try to say you’re _just close friends,_ I know you both too well for that, you obviously want more,” Lily says. “It’s tempting, but don’t go there – we’ve all got a good thing going here, and you don’t wanna risk it just for a fuck.”

Jack can’t even say anything back to her, he feels so sick to his stomach. Lily’s got it wrong, of course, but she’s also got it right – but also so, so wrong, Sammy’s never been just a fuck for even a single second, how could she even –

“I mean, I guess if you need to get out of your system, you can screw if you have to. Maybe it would help you both get over it,” Lily shrugs her shoulders. “But it might make things worse, so I’d recommend just getting over it like adults on your own.”

“We’re not like that,” Jack says, and he knows he’s repeating himself, but he doesn’t know what else to say right now even as Lily just laughs at him like he’s an idiot. “We’re not, Lily. I don’t know where you get off thinking –”

He cuts himself off when he hears the shower stop, and glares at Lily before returning to the sizzling butter on the pan in front of him.

“Don’t talk about this in front of him,” Jack says, voice strained and tight. “He’s sick and doesn’t need to deal with any of your bullshit.”

“Just think about it,” Lily says softly as she hands Jack an egg. Jack sighs and takes it. That’s the thing about Lily; no matter how obnoxious she is, she always means well and is there to help him with whatever Jack needs. Sometimes she feels the need to help with things that are none of her fucking business, but she means well.

Sammy emerges from his room a couple of minutes later with wet hair, but his eyes aren’t red-tinged anymore and he looks slightly more like a human being. When he speaks, his voice is rough but sounding at least like it isn’t causing him physical pain to speak anymore.

“You gonna let us take you to the doctor, Stevens, or do they still send shivers down your spine?” Lily says as she slides an omelet onto Sammy’s plate.

“I’m fine,” Sammy says, definitely an automatic response, as he’s not making eye contact with either of them. He slowly starts eating his omelet though, which Jack figures is victory enough.

“We’ll let you sleep it off,” Jack says, giving Lily a pointed look. “And I’ll call you later to see if you want me to drive you.”

Sammy gives Jack a look somewhere close to hurt. “Are you leaving?”

Jack almost face palms as Lily gives Jack a smug look that Sammy obviously isn’t in any state to take notice of right now.

“I can stay,” Jack says slowly, trying to convey what he means without having to say anything in front of Lily. “I just thought you’d want Lily and I out of your hair.”

Sammy blinks over at him, and Jack sighs, knowing that Sammy’s not going to be able to put the pieces together when he’s this foggy.

“Yeah, okay,” Sammy says in a soft voice, and pushes the rest of his omelet away. Jack thinks his heart might break a little seeing the sad look in his eye.

“Eat,” Lily shoves the plate right back in Sammy’s direction. “We’re not going ‘til you finish your food, Stevens. That’s an order.”

Sammy gives Jack another sad look as he tries to usher Lily and himself out of the apartment complex, and Jack hopes he gets his point across when he holds up Sammy’s keys on his way out the door, Lily already ahead of him.

Jack does get in his car, but only drives as far as the diverging in the road where he and Lily turn in different directions, and then turns right back around and heads back to Sammy’s apartment, letting himself in.

Sammy’s not in the living room or kitchen, and Jack quietly heads into the bedroom after shrugging off his coat and leaving his shoes somewhere between the two doors. The lights are out in the bedroom, but Jack can see Sammy sit up in bed when Jack opens the door.

“Hi,” Jack crawls into bed next to Sammy, pulling him back down and wrapping his arms around his chest. Sammy makes a contented sound, and tries to turn to kiss Jack, but Jack ducks out of the way.

“No kissing while you’re still coughing like that,” Jack says and Sammy makes a betrayed, whining noise. “Incentive for you to let me take you to the doctor.”

“I hate you,” Sammy says petulantly, but he still takes a hold of Jack’s hand.

“No, you don’t,” Jack says and Sammy makes another noise that Jack thinks is a cross between annoyance and happiness.

“Why were you gone so long?” Sammy murmurs after a few seconds of heavy coughing.

“Drove halfway home,” Jack yawns, and even though it’s not even noon, he finds himself all too warm and comfortable. “Wanted to throw Lily off the scent.”

His stomach twists uncomfortably at the reminder of everything Lily said to him, and it isn’t helped by Sammy asking “Why was Lily being so – you know – does she know…”

Jack swallows painfully, and decides he may as well just tell Sammy. “No, she doesn’t know, she just – she thinks we _want_ to sleep together, that’s all.”

“Oh,” Sammy says, and then, “I do wanna sleep with you. Are you saying you don’t wanna sleep with me?”

“Literally spooning you right now,” Jack says, laughing as Sammy chuckles, which turns into another hacking cough.  “No, but. She kept giving me this cryptic warnings about all the reasons we shouldn’t sleep together. That it’s – that it’s an unnecessary risk not worth the trouble.”

“Oh,” Sammy says quietly, all of the laughter from before now drained from his voice and Jack squeezes Sammy tightly.

“It’s worth the trouble,” Jack says into Sammy’s ear and he doesn’t protest when Sammy turns to kiss him, brief and chaste and a second long.

“Yeah, it is,” Sammy says quietly. “I – I’m worried, though. I think Tony might suspect.”

Jack feels cold even though the room is plenty warm, the combination of the Florida heat and Sammy’s fever making warmth inevitable. He shivers. “Is that why he –”

Sammy nods, and Jack grimaces.

“It’s gonna be okay,” Jack says quietly. “And if it’s not – then you’re more important to me than our jobs are. Always. Alright?”

“You too,” Sammy says, automatic, immediate, Jack loves him all the more for it. “I – God, I hope that doesn’t happen.”

“Me too,” Jack says, not even letting his brain enter that nightmare scenario. “But we’d be alright. We could go somewhere else.”

“Right,” Sammy says, and there’s just a little bit of longing in his voice even nestled among all the dread. Jack kisses the back of Sammy’s neck.

“We’re careful,” Jack reassures Sammy and himself in equal measure. “It’s been almost a year since – and not even Lily’s figured it out, as smart as she thinks she is. No one can prove anything.”

“She’ll be pissed the longer we put off telling her,” Sammy says, and Jack sighs. They’ve never even considered for a second that they can live openly here – they’d certainly lose their jobs if their managers knew, and could alienate all kinds of audiences and possibly put themselves in danger at the hands of those audiences.

Lily’s a different story, though. Lily’s not just Jack’s sister, she’s their best friend, their partner, one third of their little trio. It’s been ten months and Jack still hasn’t worked up the courage to tell her even though she obviously suspects more. Today proves that if nothing else does.

“I know,” Jack whispers. “I just – I just want it to be us for a little longer, okay? You and me. It works when it’s just you and me. It’s like – like two different worlds. Telling Lily would be merging them and – God, I just wanna stay in this world a little longer. It’s so fucking good here.”

“Hey, it’s up to you,” Sammy turns and presses his head against Jack’s shoulder, and Jack can’t bring himself to tell him off for breathing all over him. “But I’m too sleepy to talk now, and my throat hurts. Say all those nice things to me later when I’m less delirious, okay?”

“Sure,” Jack laughs. Sammy can always make him laugh. He lets Sammy curl into him, and he runs his hand through Sammy’s still damp hair. “Doctor when you wake up, okay?”

Sammy makes a noise and Jack can’t tell whether it’s agreement or not.

Jack wasn’t planning on sleeping, but he finds himself drifting off, and even though Sammy’s fever still concerns him, he’s enjoying the warmth. When they wake up, Jack will drive Sammy to the doctor and he’ll wait in the waiting room even though he’ll desperately wish he could go back with him. Jack knows how to make compromises.


End file.
